Anacostia Portraits is a participatory arts project using a historic photographic process to create a visual archive celebrating the people who make up the Anacostia region of the District of Columbia. In this revival of the 19th century tintype, individuals with a connection to the community were invited to portrait sessions with photographer Elena Volkova, at the Anacostia Arts Center.  Their lives touch on different parts of the varied and changing landscape of Anacostia, which began as a Native American settlement, grew into a center for DC’s African-American community, and now grapples with the push and pull of gentrification. 

Artist Elena Volkova sees Anacostia Portraits as a way for people to shape their own representations, and to encourage a dialogue between past and present. The tintype, or wet plate collodion, process makes exposures on metal plates coated with wet silver nitrate. Like a Polaroid, each exposure produces a single image. However, a single tintype takes about 15 minutes to create. Volkova uses the forced slowness to collaborate with participants, learning enough about each person to reveal their internal stories in a final portrait.

Meanwhile is a series of photographs that explores the concept of becoming. Created in the immediate everyday environments, the images are observations of moments in constant flux, which poetically document what it means to be living through this time, and to be compelled to get to know one’s place in a deep introspective way. Experienced through the lens of subjectivity, glimpses of domestic environments are juxtaposed with natural forms, leading into an escapist journey. 

"Waterlines" is a collection of black and white and color photographs of water waves, snow, and clouds. Taken from nature, the images suggest tenuity and ephemerality. Clouds, waves, and snowscapes presented on paper with minimum information and vast areas of blank paper suggest interplay between positive and negative space, image and frame, as well as bring the viewerâ??s attention to the reductive nature of the work.

Airscapes is a collection of large scale photo-based prints of clouds that explores the idea of interchange between nothing and something, and its manifestation in everyday reality.

In her recent body of work, Volkova explores the idea of liminal space. By juxtaposing life-size photographs against the real environment where these photos were taken, the intent is to question viewerâ??s perception of real and imaginary space, as well as invite the viewer to contemplate the surrounding and become aware of mundane and often overlooked details of the environment.

In Paperscapes, a series of graphite representational drawings of pieces of paper on white paper, I would like to bring the viewerâ??s attention to the discrepancy between art and reality. Employing the ideas of trompe-lâ??oil, I am interested in the threshold between the real and the false, and the moment at which the two become interchangeable. These drawings are of ordinary, commonplace, and familiar objects, bringing the viewerâ??s attention to the neutrality of a piece of paper, as well as its potential.

This site-specific exhibition was conceived as a reaction to overlooked details in the gallery space, as well as intended to bring the viewer's attention to the liminal state that exists between the artwork and the real environment. All pieces are graphite on paper.

Proofs is a site-specific photography installation that invites the viewer to examine the space as well as his/her own relationship to the environment. The images are photographs of the space, some printed exact size of the spacial detail, and re-introduced back into the space, creating dichotomy between the real and the imaginary. Emphasizing the sense of emptiness, Volkova photographed the details of the empty gallery environment, paying close attention to light and shadows, as well as subtle details that exist in the space. The untraditional display of the photographs creates a specific relationship between the viewer's body, artwork, and the environment. The goal for this project is to bring attention to the overlooked moment of the everyday.

Paperscapes is a series of graphite and silverpoint drawings that brings attention to simple overlooked moments of the everyday. In this body of work, Volkova focuses on the relationship between the real and the imaginary and the way the marginal and the peripheral exists as the main subject of the work. In Folds, Volkova examines the landscape that exists in the paper by reiterating the shadows with pencil marks. These drawings are "light-specific", and have to be carefully lit from a certain angle when on view. In the Edge, a series of 20x30 silverpoints, the viewer is invited to examine the drawing of a shadow in the relationship to the actual shadow casted on the wall.